Wednesday, 5 March 2008

I've not played that much recentley, I've raided with my new guild, and it's awesome. Koma has done Mag and Doom Lord Kazzak which I've missed, but I love the guild. I just need to spend moretime in game. I love the game, and I love my mage, I'm sorry about the lack of postage.

Tuesday, 26 February 2008

Yesterday with my newish guild I had my third night of raiding, I had a really good time, seeing 3 new encounters and even getting some loot! :)

We started off taking down Leotheras the Blind and Fathom-Lord Karathress. Leotheras was a fight I really enjoyed, it took us three goes. The first time he enraged due to lack of dps, a few people including me died early on, I made a mistake not stopping fireballs early enough on the switch from demon to human form and he one-hit me. This prompted me to make my deadly boss mods larger and more obvious on my screen, it helped make me more aware of them rather than just looking past them. The second wipe was silly, a pulled group of mobs by someone avoiding whirlwind resuilting in the wipe. Third time was great, no problems and according to mine and anothers I topped the meters on damage which I was thrilled with, because there is a lot of time when dps has to stop it allowed me to take a few Destruction Pots to boost my damage. I also used Arcane Blast whenever I had to be ready to stop dpsing.

Fathom-Lord Karathress was also a simple fight, for me all I had to do was kill the adds in the right order, as well as any Spitfire Totems that were dropped, using a /target spitfire macro to pick up any that needed removing. I think I'm not a great poster. But I enjoyed these encounters.

Monday, 18 February 2008

I was pleased to get taken along for Morogrim, I had a good idea of what to expect in the fight, I died stupidly on the 1st attempt not bandaging after a watery grave cause my death at about 50%, on the first attempt he got down to 1% when the tank was dead and dps was wiped out. But it gave me another chance to learn the fight :) Second time was simple with no deaths, all went really well. I could have done better on dps and I will do once I get more used to the fight.

After finishing most of my Nagrand quests I dinged 70 on my druid :) Just over 10 days /played.

Not sure what to do now, I either have to gear up for feral or resto, I haven't decided which. Levelling to 70 is only the start really, there's so much I need to do ;get gear, enchants, gems, rep, epic flying :S, or I could just level another alt :)

I now have a brand new guild and a new server! After looking at the guilds on my server none of the serious SSC/TK guilds seemed to be recruiting. I decided to look on Aggramar where a friend of mine plays, I looked to see out of the progressed guilds who was recruiting and a guild called Koma wanted mages along with a few other classes. So I thought it was worth a shot, they seemed to be a guild wanting to progress with the right attitude, so I applied. And they wanted me to join.

It was a really tough decision to leave my server, it's nice to have all my characters in one place. It was hardest knowing I would never be able to move back (going from PvP to PvE is only one way) but after a chat with a couple of Koma guild members and some deliberation I decided it was worth a shot. Koma has 5/6 3/4 SSC/TK progression and I really want to see the raids and do as much with my mage as I can, so I went for it. I packed up my bags and left Kor'gall behind.

Well I haven't really left it behind, I still have my druid who I'm enjoying playing and is just a couple of hours from 70. I tanked Shadow Labs at 69 and picked up my first Kara key fragment, I even got a whisper complimenting me on my tanking which put a smile on my face. I've not really settled into Aggramar yet, I went on a Sethekk Halls heroic run with a guildie, but apart from that I've stayed on Kor'gall on alts. I couldn't resist creating a new mage who looks exactly the same as Fuzzbip and is also called Fuzzbip :D Now a mighty level 6 logged off in Kharanos. I don't have much I can do on my mage, so I'll be waiting for raids to get to know my new guildies, either that or roll a new alt to level so I can spend some time in the guild.

But tomorrow if I'm needed I will be going along to SSC, Morogrim Tidewalker and Vashj are left, I'm brushing up on my knowledge of the fights as best I can. It's likely the guild will take more established members as it is a progression raid, but I'll be logged on at raid time, showing I'm ready to give all I can to Koma.

Friday, 15 February 2008

In the last post I mentioned that mages should be hit capped and I realised that there would be people out there who wouldn't be sure what I meant by this. I felt the need to explain.

As a spell caster, all mobs have a chance to resist your spells, spell hit is the stat that reduces the chance that enemy targets will resist your spells. No matter how much spell hit you have, all targets will always have a 1% chance to resist your spells, this can't be negated, removed or avoided in any way. Pulled from WoWWiki here are the base numbers for PvE targets. (PvP hit is calcualted differently when players are more than 2 levels above you)

For PvP at level 70 you will never need more than 3% hit, heroic bosses are considered to be level 72 so for heroics you will only ever need 5% hit. When you move onto raid bosses spell hit becomes much more important and you will want to reach +16% chance to hit (202 spell hit rating)

For mages there are two talents that increase your chance to hit with spells. Elemental Precision on the first tier of the frost tree increases your chance to hit by 1% per talent point with fire and frost spells, up to 3% with 3 talent points spent. All raiding fire and frost mages should have these talent points and will be looking to get 13% spell hit from gear (164 spell hit rating). Arcane Focus from the first tier of the arcane tree increases chance to hit with arcane spells by 2% per talent point up to 10% with 5 talent points spent. People speccing for Arcane Concentration will usually want to put points in here to get there, these points are helpful when sheeping or spell stealing. With 5 points in arcane focus, only 6% hit is needed to be hit capped with arcane spells, however most arcane mages will be using fire or frost spells as well, so more spell hit may be needed anyway (I'm not really sure how raiding as an arcane hybrid works to be honest, but you want as much hit as possible with all your spells). If you are in a group with a draenei mage, shaman or priest, and know you will be within 30 yards of them you gain an additional 1% hit from Inspiring Presence. Elemental shaman have the talent Totem of Wrath that will add an additional 3% to hit, in situations where you know you will be gaining these affects you may want to switch your gear to add additional crit or damage. On fights such as Gruul, you may at times be too far away from people in your party to rely on these abilities for the whole fight, only reduce your spell hit accordingly if you are likely to have these effects for the whole fight.

Spell hit is not to be confused with spell penetration, spell penetration is predominantly a PvP stat, every point of spell penetration reduces your target's resistance to your spells by one point. Useful in PvP for negating the effects of a targets Mark of the Wild or any other similar buff. However in PvE almost all raid bosses have no additional resistance apart from a base +15 to all schools of magic that is not negatable by spell penetration, they gain this due to their difference in level. This accounts for any partial resists you may see in your combat log. There may be excepetions such as Supremus who is thought to have around 200-250 fire resistance, but for the most part spell penetration has no use in PvE. For this reason mages should be running with a Subtlety enchant rather than the spell penetration enchant that a lot of people seem to have.

Increasing your spell hit up to the hit cap will increase your dps more than adding additional crit, haste or damage.

My third installment, I'm not going to go into too much detail, I'll just tell you what you should be doing as a mage.

First up, Moroes. Moroes comes with 4 out of 6 possible adds, these need to be killed or CC'd by the group, your raid leader should determine a kill order, basically kill what you are told to. Baroness Dorothea Millstipe has a Mana Burn ability, and Lady Catriona Von'Indi and Lady Keira Berrybuck both have heals, you will want to Counterspell these whenever possible. If you are killing a melee add that isn't being tanked, you may want to let a player with a higher armour class take the aggro and the hits.

When you move onto Moroes you will want to make sure you are always below both your main and off-tanks on Moroes' threat list. This shouldn't be a problem if Master Target has been set on your threat meter. This is because from time to time Moroes will Gouge the person with aggro and attack the second on his threat list, you don't want that to be you!

Moroes will occasionally vanish and Garotte a random target for about 1000 every 3 seconds, if this is you, use Ice Block to remove it.

With any luck Moroes will go down if the adds are handled correctly and the healers are able to keep up with healing the bleeders.

Moroes drops 3 items that may be of use to a mage, Nethershard Girdle, Shadow-Cloak of Dalaran and Brooch of Unquenchable Fury. The belt and the cloak should be quickly replaced as there are better options later on in Karazhan or from badge rewards, but the neck may last you longer for keeping yourself hit capped (Which you should be doing!)

He also drops the recipe for Mongoose, I'm still hoping it will drop for me one day. Other people who needed gear would usually be taken over me for the first bosses in Karazhan when I was raiding there regularly.

Thursday, 14 February 2008

I said I was thinking of respeccing while I was unguilded to try out something new, and I did. I have no intention of PvPing at this time, so I went for a PvE frost build. Undoubtedly it isn't perfect, I didn't pick it up from someone or somewhere else, I just went with the talents that I thought were best, including some points in Arcane for mana efficiency.

The build is nice for soloing, unleashing a Frostbolt and Ice Lance crit combo on a frozen target is especially satisfying. Frost spec seems to be more suitable for soloing, as effects such as Shatter are more often than not negated in group situations, as damage from others in your party usually breaks freezing before your next Frostbolt can hit. I think the talents I have taken are fairly self explanatory and the ones I have missed are ones that are more useful in soloing, PvP or maybe AoE grinding.

The new abilities I have from frost are Cold Snap, Ice Barrier and Summon Water Elemental. Ice barrier is good to have up before a boss fight to avoid some damage, depending on the fight I refresh it if I know I will be taking a lot of damage, it's basically a mana efficient Mana Shield. The water elemental is nice as well, but I tend to have a real problem using anything with a cooldown outside of boss fights, I certainly don't make the most out of it, but when I do use the elemental it does reasonable damage. Make sure to try and use it when it's least likely to get destroyed, you don't want to waste it. On boss fights I tend to summon the elemental at the start and use Ice Block if I need to, I can then use Cold Snap for another elemental and I am able to Ice Block again if needed.

So far on my mage I have done minimal soloing with this spec (I took up the chance to grind some Primal Fires which I normally have a terrible time doing) and have been to 3 or 4 heroics. Luckily I have a regular heroic group to do the daily quest with most days and sometimes another one or two after that. Heroics are easy with the people I run with, we managed to do the heroic Shattered Halls quest with 25 minutes to spare. My damage was acceptable, certainly not as high as with fire, I would usually top damage or come close, but with frost I was beaten by a few percent by a hunter, I could keep up with our fury warrior and came out above a feral druid, but she was tanking at times, I also didn't have any mana problems. My gear isn't completly suited for frost, I'm still running with Sunfire on my weapon and it would be nice to have Sapphiron's Wing Bone (Purple! I'm going to try and remember to put in item quality colours from now on) for an off-hand but I am saving my badges for possible future badge rewards at the moment. These were all well geared people and I'd be happy bringing the amount of damage I do to a PuG. I know I'll be respeccing back to fire when I decide to raid again.

The numbers are lower than with Fireballs, but the crits are very nice. When people talk about Frost dps they tend to be of the opinion that crit is not very important, I'm not really sure why, I feel once you are hit capped which is easy for heroics, then after damage you still want items with spell crit or haste if it is available. If anyone wants to tell me why I may be wrong, then I'd like to see the reasoning behind some people largely ignoring crit for a frost build. With full Winter's Chill bonus on a mob and a few buffs I was able to run at about 38% crit chance, not sacrificing any hit or damage for it.

With the correct gear for the spec and proper management of cool downs and your elemental, frost dps can be perfectly viable for 5 mans and heroics. I have yet to try it out in a raid environment and I likely won't any time soon, if I'm asked to help out on a kara run or something I'll try it out, but that's unlikely to happen. I may find a pug and I am good friends with the raid leader of my old guild 'The Scarlet Knights' he asked me to help out in Karazhan the other day but the raid was cancelled, I'd like to go for the chance at more enchanting recipes and lots of badges.

So there it is, my opinion on frost (as well as a good amount of rambling), it's enjoyable to try out something new and I now know a little bit more about the mage class as a whole. Maybe I will spec an Arcane hybrid spec sometime soon, who knows?